Chart-Track on GfK sale: It's business as usual, and don't expect sales figures in UK

Following last night's revelation that GfK has bought a controlling stake in UK sales monitor Chart-Track, VG247 has been told by the British company that no changes are planned to the way UK games charts operate, and that the focus of the new firm post-sale will be on building European tracking services.

"Not in the short-term, no," said Chart-Track director Dorian Bloch, on the subject of a British chart sea-change thanks to the takeover.

"You won't really see any difference in the UK charts. It's business as usual. We'll carry on doing what we've always done. The focus really is more on developing a range of services for our clients on a European level, which is something we're looking forward to doing with GfK."

Bloch added: "We have a lot of services that compare favourably. GfK have some strong points service-wise and so do we. And now we need to look at those and see how we can best combine our services for the good of our clients."

The sale, which has seen GfK take a 55 percent stake in Chart-Track, is effectively immediately.

"It's happened, and absolutely yes," said Bloch when asked if he was pleased at the acquisition. "We've built up a relationship with GfK over the last 10 years, so the key contacts we have at GfK are like-mined professionals who are dedicated to building accurate and timely research on the entertainment, hardware, software and accessories markets, just like us. We've worked with GfK for a long time.

"One of the things that we've done for over 10 years is a European software and hardware tracking report, and that's something we'd like to carry on and improve over time."

And no, we're not going to get sale figures like our lucky American and Japanese cousins.

"Anybody who isn't a member of ELSPA does have to pay to access the data," said Bloch. "It's actually the most cost effective and best way of providing this kind of research," "I guess the answer to your question is no, there is no plan to make sales figures suddenly available on every product simply because the nature of the business model that we have."